The more I hear about Richard Branson’s Virgingalactic “book your flight in space” project, the more I am actually thankful that I don’t have a spare $250,000 in a drawer just waiting to take me into space. Why? Because so many of the celebrities who have reserved a slot are people that I would never want to share an ordinary flight with … let alone fly out to space with and still stay sane. I’m talking about people like Paris Hilton and Ashton Kutcher. Now the douchiest of them all, Justin Bieber, has signed on for the wild. Branson himself tweeted, “Great to hear @justinbieber & @scooterbraun are latest @virgingalactic future astronauts. Congrats, see you up there!” Here are more details about the upcoming voyages:

Justin Bieber is going to space, and he may even shoot a music video in the final frontier.

The teen pop star is the latest celebrity to sign up for a suborbital flight to the edge of space aboard Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, joining actors Angeline Jolie, Ashton Kutcher and Leonardo DiCaprio.

“@richardbranson @scooterbraun @virgingalactic let’s shoot a music video in SPACE!! #nextLEVEL,” the pop star tweeted to his more than 40 milion Twitter followers.

Seats aboard the six-passenger SpaceShipTwo currently sell for $250,000. To date, more than 600 people have put deposits down to reserve a spot, according to Virgin Galactic’s website. However, the space plane hasn’t launched anyone to space just yet — it’s currently in the testing phase, with crewed flights expected to begin by the end of this year.

SpaceShipTwo is designed to fly to suborbital space and back, not make a full trip around the Earth. Passengers will experience several minutes of weightlessness and see the curvature of our planet’s limb against a black sky, Virgin Galactic officials say.

The spacecraft made its first rocket-powered test flight in April and should begin commercial operations soon, officials say. Branson has said he and his family will be aboard the vehicle’s landmark maiden voyage to space.

SpaceShipTwo is the successor to SpaceShipOne, a smaller test vehicle that won the $10 million Ansari X Prize in 2004 for becoming the first private manned spacecraft to carry people to space and back twice within the span of two weeks.

Virgin Galactic isn’t the only game in town when it comes to commercial suborbital spaceflight. XCOR Aerospace is developing a one-passenger space plane called Lynx, which may be up and running around the same time as SpaceShipOne.

It’s too bad that SpaceShipTwo isn’t as large as a commercial plane because then all of these celebrities would be stuck together for the duration of the flight. However, I honestly doubt that Angelina Jolie will truly make a trip into space — she probably tossed in her money to aid the cause. That is, if there is a cause. Whatever the case, let’s hope they built this spaceship with booster seats and childproof locks. Bieber’s gonna need them.

I kind of sort of like Ashton Kutcher. Why does everybody hate him? I mean, he cheated on Demi, but so many men in Hollywood do and no one hates on them? And I like him more than Charlie in 2 and a half men.
Justin can take the douche supreme, Chris Brown with him.

‘Whatever the case, let’s hope they built this spaceship with booster seats and childproof locks. Bieber’s gonna need them.’ HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA Hilarious and that picture is worth a million bucks,whichever photog that captured Tantrum Bieber needs to get a prize.

Genuine question here, and I’m not just taking the piss (although it’s a nice bonus);
Is he seriously going to be able to withstand the G-force of going into space, even if it is sub-orbital?
He’s such a puny little runt, he’d probably end up squished against the floor of the craft.

As mentioned, they’ll only be in zero G for a few minutes. Astronauts train religiously before going into space to withstand the long-term effects weightlessness has on the human body. (It can have some nasty consequences on muscles, bones and the cardiovascular system of astronauts)

Generally, they really don’t send people up for a few minutes before coming back to Earth. Most have missions on the International Space Station, or satellite upgrades/maintenance to do while they are in low-Earth orbit.

So. They’ll be fine. I doubt any training will be necessary. Though no doubt the launch will be epically awful (followed by awesome), considering they’ll experience on launch about six times the gravity one would feel on Earth. I hope he has a barf bag in tow (and I hope they record the flight itself)

Great comments all and spot on Arock; surprised beyawnce and Camel aren’t on the list since they are the King and Queen of offensive conspicuous consumption; In the end we the public, generally speaking, have made these cretins filthy rich and this is the result; if what they “produced” was decent their overall douchiness would be palatable, but as most of it’s crap, that really grates.

Excellent point! Aliens will be thinking oh look those little earthlings are trying space travel again, lets go check it out…then find that this lot are on board, decide we are a bunch of morons and they need to come down to sort us out. Thanks Richard.

I have no words to express how jealous I am of this little prick. Hope he finds a (tiny) black hole, and gets spaghettified. Oh, well, I’m going to watch some Skarsgard pictures now, to restore my mood.

I was about to say, it would be nice if the ship “accidentally” went adrift in space. But then I saw that Angie is on it. I feel like she’s the tether forcing everything to go right. We can’t afford to lose her!